On Fri, 12 Sep 2014 04:58:22 -0700, Charlie <nos...@all.ta> wrote:
> Early this morning, I watched last night's special on the new Stonehenge
> research. At the end of the programme, there was a link to selected
> episodes celebrating 50 years of 'Horizon', with one entitled
> 'Strangeness Minus Three' about Murray Gell-Mann's research.
>
> It was astounding to compare the austere and adult 1964 approach to
> complex particle physics - with extended interviews with Gell-Mann and
> Yuval Ne'eman, and immensely detailed and demanding brief lectures by
> Richard Feynman and A. N. Other - with the infantilised way in which
> science is presented on TV nowadays.
A couple of days ago I watched a PBS (Public Broadcasting) program on MI6
- "Secrets of HMSS." Rather than simple rational images to support the
voiceover, there were a ton of fake spy-y images. Closeups of suitcases
changing hands, chalk marks on phoneboxes, people looking surreptitious.
etc. The script wasn't bad, but the imagery was enough to make you gag.
OTOH, Carl Sagan, in his book, Intelligent Life in the Universe, was kind
enough to put delimiters around the hard math stuff, so us non-PhDs could
skip over it.